HULL FC coach John Cartwright admits his injury-hit squad might struggle to train this week.
They have a free weekend after being knocked out of the Challenge Cup.
But that is timely after another three players were added to the crocked list on Good Friday.
Loose forward John Asiata (hamstring) and second rower Joe Batchelor (calf) suffered first-half injuries in the 24-6 loss to Hull KR and then Arthur Romano had to be helped off late in the game.
On whether it was a needed week without a match, Cartwright said: “Yes, I think it has to be now.
“We are really, really skinny on troops and guys that have been playing well.
“Arto has been probably our most consistent best player all year. We were looking forward to getting Batch back on the field. And that didn’t quite happen and Johnny is Johnny: he’s very influential for us.
“I’m not sure how many will be back after the break but we just have to dust them off and get them ready for St Helens.”
Whether there’ll be any practice sessions early in the week, the Aussie admitted: “We’ll just have to wait and see how many troops can train first.
“We’ll have a medical on Monday, I think, and we’ll work it out from there.”
Cartwright thought his side were unfortunate to lose by such a sizeable scoreline at Hull KR after Joe Burgess’ late double added some gloss on for the hosts.
He said: “We didn’t play well enough to win the game.
“But I think if we’d have finished 16-6, that would have just had us talking about the courageous effort of the players to keep turning them away.
“We were up into that wind and we were trying to create things that probably weren’t there. We came up with some errors and they scored a couple of late tries.
“I’m always disappointed when that happens, but I think you’ve got to look at the 75 minutes up until that happened.”
Hull were already missing Will Pryce (ACL), Harvey Barron (ankle), Herman Ese’ese (Achilles), Jed Cartwright (hamstring), and Yusuf Aydin (ankle) as well as Brad Fash (head protocols).
Aussie stand-off Jake Arthur was also injured.